CERN (Conseil
Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire --
European Council for Nuclear Research) is teaming up with United Nations
Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and the University of Geneva to create
an organization dubbed "Citizen Cyberscience
Centre", which looks to test and deploy similar projects.

The Citizen Cyberscience Centre just yesterday released [press
release] its second generation LHC@home software, whose ambitious goal is to
assist scientists with locating the legendary Higgs boson and other exotic
particles.

Its concept is that while scientists have advanced
physics theory that tells them how they expect systems to behave, they can't
actually give a prediction of how a particular system will behave until they
put that theory into a system. With LHC@home, members of the public can
install a client on their computers, which will apply their spare computing
power towards simulating high-energy collisions between protons. The
results will then be compared with experimental data from real-world LHC runs
to narrow the search for items of interest.

Professor Dave Britton of the University of Glasgow, a researcher who previously
worked on the CMS LHC sensor, and currently works on the ATLAS sensor project, is a developer of cloud-based particle physics computing schemes. While not directly affiliated with the LHC@home code, he voiced enthusiasm on the effort, which is similar to his own GridPP (www.gridpp.ac.uk) distributed particle physics effort.

He remarks, "Scientists like me are trying to
answer fundamental questions about the structure and origin of the Universe.
Through the Citizen Cyberscience Centre and its volunteers around the world,
the Grid computing tools and techniques that I use everyday are available to
scientists in developing countries, giving them access to the latest computing
technology and the ability to solve the problems that they are facing, such as
providing clean water. Whether you're interested in finding the Higgs boson,
playing a part in humanitarian aid or advancing knowledge in developing
countries, this is a great project to get involved with."

II. LHC@home Can Also be Used to Protect
Forests -- and Lives

The new project will also be applied to processing
satellite data from governments and private entities to protect the environment
and human lives. These applications will also draw computing resources
from the LHC@home 2.0 client.

One plan involves tracking of natural disasters
such as floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes. Such a project could help aid
workers locate injured people, saving lives. It could also help people
avoid imminent natural disasters.

Additionally, the processing power can be used to
track deforestation. This will allow international governments and
environmental action organizations to assess the extent of environmental damage
and loss of biodiversity. This will allow them to better formulate plans
of action to preserve our planet's natural treasures.

Describes Francesco Pisano, Manager of
UNOSAT, "From a development and humanitarian perspective, the potential of
citizen-powered research is enormous. Participating in the Citizen Cyberscience
Centre enables us to get new insights into the cutting edge of crowdsourcing
technologies. There is no doubt that volunteers are playing an increasingly
central role in dealing with crisis response, thanks to the Internet."

III. Project is True Team Effort

While it may sound like the public is doing all
the work on these projects, they also require a great deal of effort from CERN
and its partners. Not only do they have to develop all the software, but
they also have to process the data down to a form that's digestible by the
"volunteer cloud".

To that end the UK's Science & Technology
Facilities Council is providing one of the world's top ten Tier 1 data centers
to serving up information to LHC@home 2.0 clients.

The reward, though, of the marriage of academia,
government institutions, and the public is in producing a distributed
supercomputer that far exceeds the capacity of even today's most
powerful stand-alone installations.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

First off, let me say that I do like your argument but it is very ignorant to claim it as fact.

If you read your messages over again you will see that you are using perceived observations to validate your claim that what we perceive isn't real. Here is an example of statements that completely contradict one another:

quote: Actually there are no atoms - that was just a thought exercise to help you visualize the fact that existence is mere perception.

-and-

quote: If you're thinking to yourself "absurd", then consider what they've already observed within quantum physics

quote: It's not "how I know" it is "how can everyone see these answers being displayed so plainly to them and NOT know"?

You sound like you are educated to some degree but statements like:

quote: I do know what I stated to be factually true. Authority is irrelevant because a fact is a fact whether you like it or not.

will prevent anyone from taking you seriously.

I think the best example you gave to explain your argument is the video game but you have to see that it also creates a paradox. Anything perceived by the character would have to be created within the programming of the video game. If that is true then all perceptions are false. And if all perceptions are false, they cannot be used to validate any argument of what is real or not. ie. There would be no way for the character to use perceptions within the game to validate that they are in a game.

I'm merely stating what I've observed to be true and I will hold it as fact unless I observe something contradictory. In a nutshell, what I am saying is that the fundamentals of what we perceive as existence are a lot simpler and less extravagant than the elaborate scientific theories would have us believe.

quote: I think the best example you gave to explain your argument is the video game but you have to see that it also creates a paradox. Anything perceived by the character would have to be created within the programming of the video game. If that is true then all perceptions are false. And if all perceptions are false, they cannot be used to validate any argument of what is real or not. ie. There would be no way for the character to use perceptions within the game to validate that they are in a game.

Are you familiar with "neural network" programs? These programs can "react" and "learn" based on whatever particular inputs they are receiving, as well as output from algorithms within the same program. The recurring theme in nature as we see it, is that seemingly complex things come into existence by a set of simple rules. Fractal patterns are a good example of this...

It's not a paradox as you say, because if the characters within the game were given a liberty to "think" for themselves by means of a neural network AI, that is the ability to reprogram themselves and deviate from the original program parameters, it is possible for these characters to reach a level of awareness that transcends their perceptions - in other words they'll notice that they're contained within the computer system and may want to explore whatever is beyond.